Virgin Atlantic Information

The Virgin story didn’t start in the air, it started many years ago as a record label.

Even in those days Virgin were not any old record label, they boasted some of the top acts on their books such as the Rolling Stones and Janet Jackson. It was actually not until 1984 that Richard Branson saw a gap in the airline market and announced that he was to launch a top quality good value airline.

In his usual flamboyant manner Richard Branson fast tracked the whole project and in a media frenzy packed with wall to wall celebrities in tow, Virgin Atlantic was shown off to the world.

By the end of the 80s Virgin Atlantic had flown over 1 million passengers and were already stirring up the airline industry by offering extras that no other airline hade even considered like, individual TVs for business class passengers.

A few years later in 1992 Richard Branson off loaded Virgin Music for a nice tidy sum and invested the proceeds into the ever popular Virgin Atlantic. Later the same year Virgin Atlantic also launched it’s super economy class which is now known as the Premium Economy Class.

1999 – This year was quite a big year for Virgin Atlantic to say the least. 49% of the company was sold to Singapore Airlines valuing the company at a healthy £1.225bn. Later in the year Richard Branson became Sir Richard Branson thanks to his knighthood.

From this point on Virgin Atlantic continued to grow at a rapid rate offering new and innovative services and routes.

Fast forward to 2012 and in order to gain more air dominence Virgin made an alliance with Delta Air Lines. In 2019 more alliances were made to extend the network with agreements with Air France KLM.

These days Virgin is probably one of the most diverse employers for the airline industry, tackling many of the world’s issues head on.